Obama moves to extend student loan payment relief

Surrounded by college students, President Barack Obama signs a Presidential Memorandum on reducing the burden of student loan debt, Monday, June 9, 2014, in the East Room of the White House in Washington. The president said the rising costs of college have left America's middle class feeling trapped. He says no hard-working youngster in America should be priced out of a higher education. Obama signed a presidential memorandum he says could help an additional 5 million borrowers. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Aiming to alleviate the burden of student loan debt, President Barack Obama expanded a program Monday that lets borrowers pay no more than 10 percent of their income every month, and threw his support behind more sweeping Senate legislation targeting the issue.

Flanked by student loan borrowers at the White House, Obama said the rising costs of college have left America's middle class feeling trapped. He put his pen to a presidential memorandum that he said could help an additional 5 million borrowers lower their monthly payments.

"I'm only here because this country gave me a chance through education," Obama said. "We are here today because we believe that in America, no hard-working young person should be priced out of a higher education."

An existing repayment plan Obama announced in 2010 lets borrowers pay no more than 10 percent of their monthly income in payments, but is only available for those who started borrowing after October 2007. Obama's memo expands that program by making opening it to those who borrowed anytime in the past.

Obama also announced he is directing the government to renegotiate contracts with federal student loan servicers to encourage them to make it easier for borrowers to avoid defaulting on their loans. And he asked Treasury and Education departments to work with major tax preparers, including H&R Block and the makers of TurboTax, to increase awareness about tuition tax credits and flexible repayment options available to borrowers.

"It's going to make progress, but not enough," Obama said. "We need more."

To that end, Obama used the East Room appearance to endorse legislation that would let college graduates with heavy debts refinance their loans.

The bill's chief advocate, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, joined a half-dozen other Democratic lawmakers as Obama urged Congress to pass the bill.

"This should be a no-brainer," Obama said.

The Senate is expected to debate the legislation next week, but it faces significant opposition from Republicans, who disagree with the Democrats' plan for how to pay for it.

The dual strategy — taking executive action while urging Congress to finish the job — has become Obama's signature playbook this year. Stymied by gridlock as Congress marches toward the midterm elections, he has repeatedly sought ways to go around Congress with modest steps that underscore his pitch from the bully pulpit for Congress to finish the job.

Under an income-based repayment plan created by Congress, the maximum monthly payment is already set to drop from 15 percent of income to 10 percent in July 2014. But that plan only affects new borrowers. Obama's "Pay as You Earn" plan uses another part of existing law to offer similar benefits to people who already borrowed to finance their education.

In previous Obama budgets, the White House has predicted that making the plan retroactive would cost the federal government billions of dollars in the early years. Asked about the costs Monday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said the administration won't know how much it will cost until they go through the rule-making process to put the expansion in place.

"We actually don't know the costs yet," Duncan said. "We'll figure that out on the back end."

Republican leaders in Congress have faulted Obama's steps on loan repayments for failing to address the root cause: college costs that are too high.

"This was not a thought-out policy solution, but another in a series of political events designed to distract from the difficulties facing college grads in the Obama economy," said Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

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Muslim Brotherhood Infiltration: THE FIVE DAMNING LETTERS Ignored By The Obama Administration And Hillary Clinton
June 10, 2014

6/9/2014
Source …..

The Benghazi attacks and subsequent coverup could have been prevented. The Obama administration, to include everyone who sided with him, are responsible for not heeding the words of five U.S. Congressmen who sent five separate letters to various agencies and departments exactly 90 days earlier.

How so?

On June 13th 2012, five congressmen sent some very serious warning letters regarding Muslim Brotherhood infiltration, one of which was sent to the Deputy Inspector General (IG) of the State Department, led by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The letters caused so much controversy that nothing was done about them. The congressmen contacted and consulted with Walid Shoebat to etch some details regarding such Muslim Brotherhood infiltration.

Today, resurrecting these letters (discussed later) makes an incredible argument for bringing the Obama Administration, the media, and the sharp tongues of some stupid politicians to answer some tough questions.

One of those Congressmen who sent the letters is Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) who sits on the newly formed House Select Committee on Benghazi, chaired by Rep. Trey Gowdy.

(Note: due to Westmoreland’s role on the Select Committee, we will refer to these five letters as being from him as he is the only signatory who was assigned to the committee).

Each Inspector’s General (IG) office that received these letters was given 90 days to respond.

So what happened?

Due to the political controversy caused by the letters’ addressing Muslim infiltration, none responded or even cared. It gets even worse. No one even paid attention that those 90 days expired ON THE DAY of the Benghazi attacks.

The red line was crossed by these Obama administration agencies and departments when they ignored that warning and the deadline.

And not only were there no consequences but due to the attacks and the smear campaigns against the five courageous congressmen, neither Westmoreland nor any of the other signatories kept the issue alive.

Westmoreland, who also sits on the House Intelligence Committee, needs to pick up the ball where it was left off, especially since the House Select Committee on Benghazi is compromised by the appointment of Philip Kiko as the Executive Director, which is in itself an extremely warranted concern as explained by Shoebat.com [here and here].

Of the five letters Westmoreland signed on June 13, 2012, one was sent to the Deputy Inspector General (IG) of the State Department, led by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (who was cc’d on the letter). One of the other letters was sent to the IG of the Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which presides over the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), led at the time by James Clapper and David Petraeus respectively. Perhaps more than any other, State and CIA are the two entities most central to and impacted by the Benghazi attacks.

So what do the Benghazi attacks have to do with Muslim Brotherhood infiltration? And what type of infiltration did these letters discuss?

Westmoreland’s letter to Deputy IG Howard Geisel includes the following excerpts regarding Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the State Department:

The State Department and, in several cases, the specific direction of the Secretary of State, have taken actions recently that have been enormously favorable to the Muslim Brotherhood and its interests.

One of those actions identified by Westmoreland alleges that a series of meetings with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) involved attempts to do EXACTLY what blaming the video for the Benghazi attacks was supposed to do. The letter sent 90 days before the Benghazi attacks stated that these meetings…

…are now known as “the Istanbul Process” and are aimed at finding ways to accommodate the OIC’s demands for restrictions on freedom of expression guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, so as to preclude “blasphemy” against Islam and its adherents.

As Shoebat.com has clearly and extensively demonstrated, attempts to blame the video for the Benghazi attacks were specifically designed to do exactly what Westmoreland suggested the OIC was attempting to accomplish.

The most prominent Muslim figure to work at the State Department is stealth jihadist Rashad Hussain, who is the U.S. envoy to… the OIC.

In fact, our “Ironclad” Report includes a screenshot of the YouTube channel belonging to the man who produced the very anti-Muhammad video the Obama administration itself attempted to blame for the attacks. The only two men featured on the “Feed” page of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula (aka Sam Bacile) – who contacted us earlier this year to persuade us of his good intentions – were the same exact two men at the heart of the campaign in Egypt, Wisam Abdul Waris (top) and Nader Bakkar (bottom). These men sought to blame the video for riots across the Middle East for the purpose of silencing free speech:

Chillingly, the June 13th letter to Geisel also included the following excerpt after Westmoreland enumerated five specific concerns, including the one about the OIC’s efforts to suppress speech mentioned above:

We believe these actions and policies are deeply problematic. They may even pose security risks for this nation, its people and interests.

Westmoreland was proven right on the very day that the deadline for a response to his letter had expired. He was proven right in the subsequent days as well, when the administration intentionally parroted the lie that the anti-Muhammad video was responsible for the attacks. That lie was perpetuated in the Arab world for one reason – to lobby for non-Muslim governments to enact and enforce laws that made criticism of Islam a crime. The Obama administration helped to push this narrative every time it blamed the video; Obama inexplicably did so himself a full two weeks after the attacks (Exhibit J in our “Ironclad” Report).

Perhaps even more shockingly, the New York Times Cairo Bureau Chief David Kirkpatrick pushed the narrative more than one year later, on December 28, 2013 in a fictional missive masquerading as journalism, as Shoebat.com reported. Wrote Kirkpatrick:

Months of investigation by The New York Times, centered on extensive interviews with Libyans in Benghazi who had direct knowledge of the attack there and its context, turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault. The attack was led, instead, by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi. And contrary to claims by some members of Congress, it was fueled in large part by anger at an American-made video denigrating Islam.

In response to the Kirkpatrick article’s lies, Westmoreland said he thought the Times was…

“…trying to absolve [Clinton] from the lack of security that was sent over there, the number of requests for security that was turned down.”

In reality, all Westmoreland had to do is to stop heeding to political pressure, read his own letter to learn what the initial reason for the video narrative was about. The very Muslim Brotherhood infiltration that Westmoreland sounded alarm bells over is why the narrative of the Obama administration matched the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East.

Westmoreland knows this!

Besides Rashad Hussein, two other Muslim Brotherhood agents who work at the State Department are Farah Pandith and Salam al-Marayati. In 2009, Pandith was sworn in – on the Qur’an – as the U.S. Representative to Muslim Communities by Secretary Clinton, as Shoebat.com reported.

Perhaps more relevant to Westmoreland’s letters as they relate to State Department infiltration is Pandith’s appearance at an Islamic Eid dinner just two days after the Benghazi attacks, inside the Ben Franklin room. Joining Pandith besides Hillary was Ali Sulaiman Aujali, then Libya’s Ambassador to the U.S., as Shoebat.com reported.

Aujali has a history that includes speaking at Muslim Brotherhood front groups. In 2011, as reported by Shoebat.com, he spoke at the ISNA convention and was introduced by the Executive Director of CAIR-Chicago, Ahmed Rehab:

Is Pandith far from being involved? No. In 2006, Pandith joined a Muslim Brotherhood agent who was also the recipient of the ‘smoking gun’ Benghazi email sent by a White House Deputy three days after the attacks (detailed below). Accompanying her was a stealth Muslim Brotherhood agent named Yahya Basha, who is closely connected to a very large stealth jihadist fish, the chairman of the very notorious Dar al-Hijrah mosque, Bassam Estwani, as Shoebat.com has revealed.

As for Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) founder and Executive Director Salam al-Marayati, he has a history that includes time as the State Department’s envoy to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

Intelligence Community

As Shoebat.com revealed, one of the figures on the distribution list of what’s been billed as the ‘smoking gun’ email that ties the anti-Muhammad video narrative to the White House, is a Muslim Brotherhood agent. Mehdi K. Alhassani received the email sent by White House Deputy Ben Rhodes on September 14, 2012 that instructed Susan Rice to lie during her appearance on the September 16th Sunday talk shows.

As a Muslim Brotherhood infiltrator, Alhassani would almost necessarily have the same agenda as Wisam Abdul Waris and Nader Bakkar, mentioned above. Blaming the video was about censoring speech critical of Islam.

Alhassani served as President of the Muslim Students Association (MSA) – a Muslim Brotherhood front group – chapter at George Washington University (GWU) and has extensive ties to Muslim Brotherhood groups and individuals. In 2006, he joined Pandith and Basha on European Muslim Brotherhood goodwill tour. Alhassani was on the receiving end of this email in his capacity as an employee of the White House. More specifically, Alhassani was / is Special Assistant, Office of the Chief of Staff, National Security Council Staff, Executive Office of the President [EOP]. Here is a screen shot of the email read by Alhassani three days after the Benghazi attacks but not shown to the American people for well more than one year later:

More than 90 days earlier, in his June 13, 2012 letter to I. Charles McCullough III, IG for the ODNI, Westmoreland provided examples that represent cause for concern about Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the Intelligence Community. One of those concerns was the demonstrably false testimony of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper, which included Clapper’s assertion that the Muslim Brotherhood is “largely secular” and “has eschewed” violence. Westmoreland then wrote:

These sorts of activities strike us as deeply problematic with respect to the national interest and security, and are within the scope of your duties under Section 2 of the Inspector General Act of 1978, as amended, “to conduct and supervise audits and investigations relating to the programs and operations of the [Office of the Director of National Intelligence] and… to provide a means for keeping the head of the establishment and the Congress fully and currently informed about problems and deficiences relating to the administration of such programs and operations and the necessity for and progress of corrective action.”

As was the case with the State Department’s IG office, McCullough did not respond to Westmoreland’s letter despite it being brought to his attention that the head of the ODNI, Clapper said this more than a year earlier, as the Arab Spring was unfolding:

John Brennan, the man who would replace David Petraeus as CIA Director one day after Obama’s 2012 re-election, is also cause for great concern. In his prior position as Homeland Security Advisor, Brennan received a letter from a woman named Farhana Khera, Executive Director and President of Muslim Advocates, a group with extensive connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. Khera herself is featured on the website of the Muslim Brotherhood’s largest front group in the U.S., as Shoebat.com reported.

In her letter to Brennan, co-signed by dozens of Muslim organizations, Khera urged him to create an “inter-agency task force led by the White House” with the directive that it “purge” counter-terrorism training materials the Muslim Brotherhood front groups found offensive. Shockingly, Brennan responded to the letter in the affirmative, granting Khera most of what she requested.

Based on what Westmoreland has demonstrated that he knows, he should already know that the Executive Director of the Committee on which he now sits – Philip Kiko – is registered to lobby on behalf of Muslim Advocates. In 2013, as Shoebat.com reported, Kiko was employed by the Smith-Free Group that counts the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) among its clients. Muslim Advocates is listed as a member of LCCR.

According to the Insider’s Guide to Key Committee Staff of the U.S. Congress in 2010, Kiko:

…served as chief of staff on the House Judiciary Committee, where he helped craft the USA Patriot Act and pushed for its first two extensions.

According to Khera’s own bio:

Ms. Khera was Counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Property Rights. In the Senate, she worked for six years directly for Senator Russell D. Feingold (D-WI), the Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee. Ms. Khera focused substantially on the Patriot Act, racial and religious profiling, and other civil liberties issues raised by the government’s anti-terrorism policies after September 11, 2001.

The Patriot Act was clearly watered down to avoid identifying the face of America’s Muslim Brotherhood enemies. Khera’s letter to Brennan illustrates exactly how this kind of thing is done. As an individual who “helped craft” the Patriot Act, Kiko was part of a compromised or worse, corrupted process. As such, the Benghazi investigation is compromised by having such an individual as its Executive Director.

In conclusion, the blood of four dead Americans including the silence on all the excuses, is on the hands of all who sided with the Obama administration or even dismissed the warnings of those five congressmen. Westmoreland should take the opportunity to resurrect these concerns if he is serious about getting to the bottom of what happened at those U.S. installations in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. If he does not, he risks being complicit in a coverup because unlike the other Select Committee members, Westmoreland’s letters demonstrate he does not have plausible deniability.

It makes no difference how well-intentioned or pure Westmoreland or Committee chair Gowdy may be. If this committee is compromised by the likes of someone who has a stake in doing just that, based on what he’s done in the past, every member of this committee risks having to do the same thing in the future based on what they will have done in the past.

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